Progress Against Breast Cancer – at a Cost

The F.D.A. has given approval for the oral medication letrozole to be used as an adjuvant hormone treatment for post-menopausal women with early-stage breast cancer.

Now both letrozole and its competitor anastrozole have been shown to improve relapse-free survival compared with the old standard of care, tamoxifen.

What’s the downside, one might ask? In addition to increasing the risk of osteoporosis, these two newer drugs have another disadvantage – one that is not commonly mentioned in scientific articles, but is well-known in the world I happen to practice in:

They’re quite expensive.

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